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“ Nothing About Us Without Us”: Self-Advocate Leader Ari Ne’eman Receives Ruderman Foundation Award

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January 26, 2015

When Ari Ne’eman was a student at a Jewish middle day school in New Jersey, he was asked to leave the program due to misunderstandings about the nature of his autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. Today, at age 27, he became the second recipient of the prestigious Morton E. Ruderman award for his leadership in advocating for full inclusion of people with disabilities into society.

The $100,000 award from the Ruderman Family Foundation recognizes an individual who has made an extraordinary contribution to the inclusion of people with disabilities in the Jewish world and the greater public and is based on past achievements and the potential for future contributions to the field. Ne’eman said he will use the award money for a brand new Disability Rights project, but he isn’t prepared yet to provide more details. 

Last year, the inaugural award was given to Dr. Michael Stein, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability.The Award was named after Mort Ruderman, a founder of the Ruderman Family Foundation.The primary consideration for the award is whether the recipient’s work has made life more equitable for people with disabilities, and Ne’eman’s contributions have certainly met and exceeded that goal.

After graduating from public high school in 2006, Ne’eman co- founded the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, (ASAN) which seeks to advance the principles of the disability rights movement with regard to autism. ASAN believes that the goal of autism advocacy “should be a world in which Autistic people enjoy the same access, rights, and opportunities as all other citizens.” In 2009, President Obama nominated him to the National Council on Disability, a federal agency charged with advising Congress and the President on disability policy issues. He previously served on other governmental and agency advisory committees.

As stated on their website, ASAN is nonprofit organization “run by and for Autistic people. ASAN was created to serve as a national grassroots disability rights organization for the Autistic community. …” ASAN has clashed publicly with other national autism groups such as Autism Speaks over the issue if autism should be cured or accepted as a natural part of human differences. “We believe autism is a legitimate part of human neurodiversity and has always been with us,” Ne'eman said.  For those on the autism spectrum who are non-verbal, Ne’eman believes that a high priority should be placed on helping those people find their own voice and becoming self-advocates, such as more funding for augmentative and alternative communication training instead of additional funding of autism causation studies.

Looking at the Jewish community, Ne’eman wants to change the mindset there too, moving away from looking at disability and special needs only through a charity lens. “Right now the Jewish community sees inclusion that is something nice or extra to do with special grant funding, instead of being part and parcel of every program.”  He wants us all to move away from looking at inclusion as a charitable mitzvah to something that is an integral part of our community.  In this goal, he admires the slogan of Bizchut, The Israel Human Rights Center for People with Disabilities, which in Hebrew is “B’Zchut Lo B’ Chesed “(By Rights, Not by Charity).

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